May
20, 2016
Burtonsville,
MD
Today
I attended the janaza of a very old
and dear friend, Muneera Afifa. Idara-e-Jaferia (mosque) very kindly hosted the
services. Immediately after juma’ah
prayers, the janaza (funeral) prayer
was held. The scene at Idara resembled a reunion of Jamaat al-Muslimeen
members, former members, and associates. I ran across Sr. Yasmine Abdul-Jalil; Sr.
Fatimah Abdullah and Sr. Hamdiyah, both from Philadelphia; Sr. Amatullah; Sr. Safiyyah
Abdullah; and Sr. Sumayah Nahidian and her daughter. Then there was Sr. Najah; Sr.
Zainab Kareem; and Zainab’s son Natheer Kareem. There were others who looked
familiar but whom I could not immediately place. Br. Mauri Saalakhan of the
Aafia Foundation had cancelled a speaking engagement in New Jersey to be there.
Br. Saifuddin Waliullah of Masjid Al-Islam and Br. Khalid Griggs from North
Carolina were there. Jamaat al-Muslimeen Ameer Dr. Kaukab Siddique, a long-time
friend of Muneera, was not physically present as he had a juma’ah khutbah to deliver at Masjid Jamaat
al-Muslimeen in Baltimore, but had sent condolences with his daughter (this
writer).
We
met, wept, and commiserated with each other, and then left in a miles long
funeral procession for the cemetery. The interment was held at the Maryland
National Memorial Park in Laurel, MD, where Idara-e-Jaferia holds a section
specifically for Muslim burials.
Muneera
was a leading member of the DC chapter of Jamaat al-Muslimeen c.1978 – 1985. I
remembered her being at every Jamaat meeting, along with her close friend Yasmine
Abdul-Jalil, whom she knew from the Islamic Party. Yasmine—along with her then
husband, Mustafa Abdul-Jalil—hosted many of the meetings in their Silver Spring
home. She had given Muneera shahada,
and the bond between them was tight.
Muneera
was lively, outspoken, and down-to-earth, attending Jamaat al-Muslimeen meetings
with her three small children, Sulaiman, Nafeesa, and Atiya, whom she did not
hesitate to breast-feed during the meetings. The organization’s platform
included racial and gender equality; permissibility of women’s leadership over
men (contingent on their respective taqwa-levels);
anti-imperialism; and internationalism. Muneera encompassed all of these
tenets. A Black Washington DC, native, she appeared regularly at Jamaat
al-Muslimeen protests at the Egyptian Embassy (against the regime of Hosni
Mubarak, known for his torture of political opponents); at marches through poverty-ridden
DC projects (carrying the revolutionary message of Islam to local communities);
at pickets of the Saudi Embassy (calling for an end to the monarchy there); and
at Jamaat al-Muslimeen local and national conferences, which relied heavily on
her organizing skills.
“Patience
and perseverance,” qualities of a Muslim mentioned throughout the Qur’an, were
regularly mentioned at DC Jamaat meetings. And Muneera exemplified these
traits, despite going through many trials and tribulations at various points in
her life.
To
me, she was a tower of strength, unflinching in faith. It was the era before
political correctness, and I was then attending Annandale High School, a mostly
White school in affluent Fairfax County (just outside Washington, DC). There
were no other evidently practicing Muslims at Annandale High at the time, and I
met major harassment for my adaption of the hijab.
At the time, hijab was not the norm
in my family—my mother wore it nominally; my sister, my aunt, and my
grandmother wore it not at all—and support for my decision to publicly identify
as a Muslim was nowhere to be found. As daily persecution against me at
Annandale High, including physical attacks by ignorant, corporate-media
informed youth, increased, I looked to Muneera. She gave me unconditional
support for the path I had chosen, and an affirmation far beyond that of a
mother. Somehow, she found the time and energy to be there for me, even while
being the young mother of three small children. And- as I heard repeatedly at
the janaza, I was not the only one for
whom she did this. As a fellow janaza
attendee told me, Muneera was the mother to an entire community.
As
I stood in the cemetery thinking of the pivotal role Muneera had played during
my teen years, and the selflessness with which she’d given of herself, tears
rolled down my cheeks. The Iranian clergyman conducting the graveside ceremony
went on at considerable length in Arabic—which most of the attendees clearly
could not understand. He offered durood
as-salaam to the Prophet Muhammad’s (SAW) family, including the twelve
imams. Oddly, he could not remember or pronounce the name of Muneera’s father (Glover
Collins), in his opening statement.
By
this time, Muneera’s daughter Nafeesa and son Sulaiman were completely inside
the (open) grave with their mother’s body. They adjusted and re-adjusted their
mother’s body, until Muneera lay on her right, with head towards the ka’aba. (In an Islamic burial, the body
is buried directly in the ground enshrouded in a white sheet, and no coffin is
needed, other than perhaps for transport. Family members are encouraged to
perform last rites themselves, rather than relying on an undertaker.)
Upon
completing the task, Nafeesa emerged from the grave with shovel in hand, and
asked the women to move forward, as they were to approach the grave first, to
offer prayers, or to symbolically throw dirt on the body. A pile of dirt had
been placed on a nearby cart by cemetery workers. After heaping several shovel-fulls
of dirt over her mother’s body, she offered the shovel to the women watching.
Several of the women, including the stylishly-dressed Fatimah Abdullah from
Philadelphia, were grabbing up handfuls of dirt from the pile, and placing them
in the grave. However, none stepped forward immediately to take the shovel from
Nafeesa, perhaps because it was rather large and unwieldy. I stepped forward,
and took it, placing several shovel-fulls of dirt over my beloved friend’s body,
memories of the years in Jamaat al-Muslimeen with Muneera flooding my
consciousness. I would have continued in my reverie, but Nafeesa reclaimed the
shovel from me, and offered it to the other women, before turning it over to
the men. The men then completed the job of covering the body with dirt.
Nafeesa
was the heroine of the day. The burial ritual over, she stood before the crowd,
speaking with grace, clarity, and without breaking down. She thanked the
attendees for the outpouring of love shown her mother, and for their support of
her and her family. I remembered Nafeesa as a small child, dressed by her
mother in dark-colored hijab similar to the one she wore now. She had flowered
into a poised, self-confident, and beautiful young woman. I knew that her mother
would be proud of the manner in which she presided over this, most difficult of
ceremonies.
Imam
Khalid Griggs, of the Community Mosque of Winston-Salem, poignantly detailed his
life-long friendship with Muneera. He mentioned how she would energize any
Islamic project with which she was involved, and how it was hard for her to
refrain from becoming involved any time she heard of positive Islamic work
being done.
The
last time I saw Muneera was at a gathering for Palestine (Quds Day) in
Washington, DC. It was Ramadan and well into the fast, and everyone was feeling
its effects. Traversing the crowd to get to me, Muneera greeted me with her
characteristic loving embrace. From the time frame described by family members,
she may have already seen the onset of the disease which ultimately took her
life. But there she was, undaunted, by heat, fatigue, and hunger, a Black woman
standing up for Palestine. May Allah forgive her sins and grant her Paradise.
©
2016 Nadrat Siddique
